WELCOME to Holiday Inn Quarantine Designated Hotel: In the three days you are with us, you can dump your luggage in your ROOM, walk out of the hotel as far as the Green Zone - Tappoos - and come back to the hotel

A relative of our Editor-in-Chief relayed the above when she returned last week to Australia from Suva. Here is what the relative conveyed to us
'What kind of quarantine is this 3 nights in a hotel? Just, a bloody money-making scam, not to mention the $59 per person Covid test. We were told that we couldn't take the visitors into our room but they could come to the hotel and sit, eat, and scream in the hotel's foyer. We even saw relatives bringing cooked food to the hotel for their families and scores were watching rugby in the foyer. When we asked the hotel manager why should we accept such quarantine nonsense, she said, Isa, ask the FFP government. Worst, when we were picked up at the airport on arrival by a designated taxi, we refused to get in after the taxi driver asked if it was ok for another passenger to jump into our taxi to Suva. We flatly refused, for we were observing all strict Covid travel and vaccine rules. We had made an emergency trip to visit a very elderly and frail relative admitted to the CWM Hospital in Suva. We are so angry that we were cheated out of $2,0000 by the FFP government and Holiday Inn. If we could meet relatives in the foyer, eat their homemade food, and roam around the so-called Green Zone, we could have just gone to our relatives and quarantined in one of their rooms for three days. Shame.'

The Ministry of Commerce, Trade, Tourism and Transport is reviewing the requirement of a three-night stay at a Care Fiji Certified hotel. This was according to the minister Faiyaz Koya during the Fiji Chamber of Commerce and Industry panel discussion yesterday. ”

Instead, we are now looking at visitors – particularly returning residents and those coming to visit family – to have the option to go straight home, so long as they have a pre-booked COVID-19 test within 48 hours of landing in Fiji,” he said.

“This will make us even more competitive. We are finalising the logistics for this and we expect an announcement very soon.

“When the tourism sector recovers – so do other supporting ones like agriculture, construction, retail, transport, arts and entertainment.

“More money flows into the economy, more jobs are created, more MSMEs grow.”

Mr Koya added the recovery they had seen was primarily based on the US and half of Australia markets alone.
“Since then, we have seen more of Australia open up,” he said.

“And as of March, New Zealand, our second largest visitor market has opened.

“So we’re looking at more visitors.”

Since re-opening of the international borders to Travel Partners Fiji has seen around 39,728 international visitors in December and January according to the minister.

Mr Koya said that was an incredible feat considering the country was also dealing with the global impacts of the Omicron variant, and by a Tropical Cyclone (TC Cody).

“From the initial 14 Travel Partners, today, we have 66 – including almost all our key trading, especially our Pacific Island neighbours,” he said.

These numbers, according to Mr Koya meant more Fijians could return back to work, businesses could recover and new ones could open up as well as restore nearly third of Fiji’s GDP sector.